Billionaire's Accidental Wife
Chapter 26

Chapter 26

One week later.

Dave became nothing but a pain in the ass.

And it was mere luck that the man was gone for a meeting, so here she was, manning the phones, trying not to die of boredom, hunger, and second-hand entitlement from all the asshats who thought that 'personal assistant' was an archaic English word for 'person put on Earth to cater to Dave's every whim and whom it was appropriate to scream at if she did not immediately divine his exact wishes through telepathy.' Goodness, the man was a jerk. How did she even fall in love with this asshole anyway?

She could see one of those female field asshats approaching, and it was with considerable relief that she saw one of the phones light up. She grabbed at it like a lifeline.

"Brown Inc., how can I help you?" "Hey, Chelsea, it's Catherine. Time to gossip?" Wow, she didn't call her on her phone, but here in the office. "Sure thing, ma'am, I'll walk you through that right now. It should only take about an hour," she mumbled sweetly.

Asshat made an annoyed face but moved off to look for someone with a more open schedule to harass.

"That scared her off?" Catherine asked and giggled...

"I still don't know how you did that job before with Shawn. I had just one jerk yelling at me all day, and that practically had me running for the hills."

"Dave is yelling at you? Tell me and I shall bite the hell out of him for being rude."

"Nah, he ignored me since day one when I didn't go home with him," Chelsea muttered and mentally rolled her eyes.

"In Sebastian's mansion?"

"Yes, now Dave lives in his apartment."

"Good, so are you OK with him ignoring you?" "Of course, it's better than trying to be nice, Catherine."

"Oh really?" Catherine asked.

"Like you've ever run for the hills in your life," Chelsea added. "I bet you don't even know where the hills are. Anyway, yeah, the hyena's headed out in search of different prey. What's up, girl? Any news with Jane?"

"About that, I'll tell you later. Let's not talk about her. But let's talk about you." Catherine let out with excitement.

"I have nothing to talk about but children in Kenya."

"Oh, OK. Fine. Well, I cannot believe Shawn talked me into a business trip right after the party,

"Catherine complained. "I'm so hungover I can't even get excited about being in London yet. Thank goodness I have the week-I'm going to make time around the meetings to see the Globe Theatre, and at least a few museums."

"Are you going to hang around the BBC headquarters at all?" Chelsea asked. "Maybe see some of those old spy-fi show stars you love?"

e.

"I wish," Catherine said with a sigh. "They tore down the old headquarters awhile back, though."

They chatted some more about her travel plans, with her occasionally going into fake professional - speak when someone walked by or putting her on hold when someone came up with an issue that actually fell into her job description.

Meanwhile, she occupied her hands by sketching some new designs, mostly things she was toying with for Jane's trousseau. She didn't usually work with leather, but she knew Jane had a thing for the spy team of Steed and Mrs. Peel, and she thought she could put together a sort of homage to one of Mrs. Peel's kinky leather catsuits. The trick would be to find leather that had been tanned and cured until it was soft as velvet -maybe she could line it with real velvet as well. She would have to cut it just right so that it gripped and defined without chafing.

An instant message from Jane popped up, 'Girl are you done with the design?'

"Ahem."

Chelsea looked up, automatically closing the message as she did so, though she wasn't sure if the speaker had already seen it. Her face didn't give me any clue either. It was the accounting manager, a middle-aged woman whose expression always suggested that she was sucking on a lemon while trying desperately not to let on how much she wanted to spit it out. There were two HR flunkies behind her; she hoped they didn't have two different requests, or she could be stuck helping them for a while.

"Yes?" she inquired. "Can I help you with something?"

"Just come with me," Miss Lemon's face indicated. Her voice sounded a little worried, the way a rookie cop might as he trapped his first suspect,

"I'm sorry, ma'am, I'll have to call you back," she said in her I'm-definitely-talking-to-a real-client-voice.

"Have a pleasant day, and thank you for doing business with Brown Inc." She looked back up at the Lemon again, who was fidgeting like someone had relocated an entire anthill to her pants. "Seriously, what's up? Is it performance review time again? Because I have to say, I think you have been doing an excellent job."

Usually, she can get a smile out of anyone, even her new friends, with the way she rattles on, though okay, the woman's smile usually looks a little nervous like she thinks the thought police are going to rappel down from the ceiling and disappear her for having fun at work. This time, though, she didn't smile at all. Neither did the HR flunkies. Wait, were they all together? Like, as a group? For her?

"Let's just go discuss it in my office, Chelsea," the Miss Lemon beauty said.

"Uh, sure," she answered back. "But I'm supposed to be manning the phones, and"

"Lea will do that," Miss Lemon said, gesturing to a mousy little intern so short and unassuming that she'd dismissed her as Miss Lemon's shadow. "If you're not in the middle of anything Oh, just wasting company time talking to my best friend and setting up appointments for my other friend, she didn't say.

Instead, Chelsea stood up and held out her wrists like a suspect being collared. "You got me, dear!"

Lemon's lips thinned. "Please, Chelsea, try to be professional." "Yes, ma'am." Chelsea could feel the eyes of the lobby on her. She followed Lemon, the HR flunkies hanging back a second before swooping in behind her, like security detail at the parade.

Chelsea sat down in the folding chair in Lemon's office, which was really a glorified cubicle since she only ranked about a head higher than her on the corporate totem pole. Peeling inspirational posters peered down at her from the walls, and the fluorescent light over her computer hissed and spat, blinking on and off so rapidly it looked like it might be in Morse code. Miss Lemon sat down at the desk and nervously shuffled some papers, while the HR cronies took up positions flanking her like bodyguards. She waited for her to say something. And waited.

Damn, those pieces of paper were getting thoroughly shuffled.

"Look," Chelsea said when she couldn't stand the suspense any longer - "What is this about? Is it about that coffee spill on Graham from Accounting? Because first of all, that was an accident, and second of all, he was harassing me and he had it coming-". Lemon cut her off with a wave of her hand and hemmed before finally beginning to speak. "As you know, we regularly monitor CCTV-"

"What?" Chelsea blurted, too startled to keep from interrupting her. "I didn't know that!" Lemon heaved a sigh, and settled back into her chair, seeming more comfortable. Ah, the familiar old ground of having to explain something to her. "It was in your employment contract."

"Oh. Right." So sue her, she hadn't read the employment contract. Yeah, yeah, she knew that wasn't smart, but give her a break; the thing was as thick as three Twilights and didn't have half the human interest She'd figured she could pick up most of it as she went along, and so

far, she'd been right.

"As I was saying, we monitor the company's CCTV, and, well. There's no easy way to say this." Lemon took a deep breath like she was about to plunge into a deep and roiling ocean.

"We know you and Mr. Brown had a past," she said, in the kind of portentous tone used by heretical prophets in cheesy movies with bad CGI. She took another deep breath. "We know about your past and everyone here is affected by your silent war."

What?

What the hell was she talking about?

And what does CCTVs involvement in this?

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